


Bad Dreams & Burns

by alessandralee



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Late Night Conversations, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 20:28:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandralee/pseuds/alessandralee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma runs into Grant after yet another nightmare of falling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Dreams & Burns

It wasn’t the first time she’d had this particular nightmare. In fact the familiar sensation for falling at roughly 200 kilometers per hour hand been haunting her sleep regularly for the last three months. Jemma knew logically that this was her brain’s way of processing and dealing with her actual fall. But that didn’t make reliving the worst 60 seconds of her life any easier.

Still, Jemma felt she was handling things quite well. She would wake from her nightmare drenched in cold sweat. Then she’d turn on the light, change into a fresh set of pajamas, and peruse one of the many journal articles and papers she had set aside over the last few months. Then she’d turn off her light and go back to sleep. If the team didn’t have anywhere to be in the morning, she even gave herself the luxury of an extra half hour of sleep to compensate.

But her routine wasn’t helping her tonight. She’d been up for an hour and a half already, having read through two of doctor Banner’s papers on the effects of prolonged contact with a variety of force fields. But when she’d turned off the light, she couldn’t shake the feeling of falling. She immediately opted to turn the light back on and then she resorted to her surefire method of inducing exhaustion. It was a small paperback Skye had given her last months. She’s only made it through three chapters so far; it put her to sleep that easily. Clearly, Jemma did not share Skye’s deep love for the cheesiest of romance novels. But telling Skye that had only made the other woman loan her “The Scientist and the Spy,” which she apparently thought would convert Jemma to the genre. And Jemma from the eyebrow raises and inappropriate gestures Skye had been making towards her whenever a certain Mr. Grant Ward was in the room, Skye had taken more than a few hours of entertainment from the book.

After making it through a record two chapters in one sitting, Jemma still felt like she was on edge. That forced her to consider the possibility that she wouldn’t be getting much sleep that night. She figured that, even if sleep wasn’t going to be coming soon, a few cups of tea might at least help her to calm down. So she throws on a ratty old sweatshirt and a pair of bear shaped slippers and quietly pads down the hall to the kitchen.

She takes her time brewing the tea, enjoying that calming affect that going through the familiar routine brought her. Jemma Simmons was most definitely a creature of habit. It would have been better if she hadn’t had to use the electric kettle, she’d grown up in a family that took it’s tea very seriously and that meant she hadn’t even seen someone use an electric kettle until she’d met Fitz at the Academy. Unfortunately, an old-fashioned kettle just wasn’t ideal for people who mainly lived on a plane. Still, that was the only concession she was willing to make when it came to her tea.

She gets halfway through her first piping hot cup, and already feeling much more relaxed, when someone clears their throat at the other side of the room. Jemma jumps out of her seat in fright, spilling most of the tea on leg in the process.

“Shit.” That was more of a reaction to the burning sensation on her thigh than to her initial scare.

“Sorry. I was actually trying not to scare you.” At least Grant had the decency to bow his head and look apologetic.

“And in all your years of well… being a spy you never learned how to enter a room without scaring the living daylights out of its occupant?” Jemma’s annoyance was amplified by the realization that her hard earned sense of calm had flown out the window.

“I said I’m sorry, it was an accident. Now let me look at that.” He crosses the room and gently pushes her back into her chair. Then he carefully rolls up the leg of her pajames, and even though Jemma knew there was definitely going to be a burn there, it’s hard to feel it over the sensation of Grant’s rough fingers against her leg.

But there it was, just above her right knee. In less than two minutes it had already started to blister. Yet another thing to distract her from sleep.

“Christ.” Jemma curses, and immediately hopes that her outburst hasn’t woken anyone up. She just hadn’t been ready for Grant to start poking at her burn.

“Did that hurt?” he asks her, completely sincere.

She doesn’t dignify that with an answer. 

“There’s an all-purpose balm in the drawer next to the sink. Can you just hand it to me?”

“I’ll take care of it. You just sit back and relax.”

Jemma appreciates the gesture, really. And a repeat of whatever he did with his fingers while rolling up her pajama bottoms is not something she would say no to. Unfortunately, she has no way of being sure she won’t get another instance of him poking at her blisters. Sometimes he seems incapable of being gentle. Firmly, she pulls the small container from his hands and applies the balm herself.

“There, all taken care of. Not do you want to tell me what you’re doing up at,” she looks at the clock on the microwave, “4:07 AM?”

“Light sleeper,” he replies, “and I figured that since you actually left your bunk this time, it must have been bad.”

“What must have been bad?” Jemma tries to play innocent. It unnerves her how perceptive he can be sometimes.

He levels his gaze to meet hers.

“I assume its nightmares. Whatever it is, it’s been happening two to three times a week since the fall.”

Jemma has not idea how to respond to that.

“I… I… I’m fine,” she finally stammers.

“You should see the doctor Coulson recommended. Or at least talk to someone,” he avoids eye contact while he says this, and even his voice sounds uncomfortable with the topic he’s bringing up.

“And you should see the doctor he recommended for your anger,” she counters.

“Fair enough.” He sighs, “Will you at least talk to me about it?”

This isn’t the first time he’s tried to get her to open up to him. And even though she knew he wasn’t going to think less of her for whatever she was feeling, she still found it hard to talk about.

“There isn’t much to say. I dream that I’m falling. I wake up. It’s my brain subconsciously processing a traumatic event. It will go away.”

“And in the meantime?” His eyebrow rises to punctuate the question.

“And in the meantime I have papers I’ve been meaning to read anyway. And we keep plenty of tea in the cabinets. And, if worst comes to worst, Skye had plenty of romance novels I can borrow.” She’s not sure what propelled her to share that last bit of information with him.

He smirks at the mention of romance novels, but doesn’t comment.

“Just think about it. And try to get more sleep. We don’t have to be ready to meet our liaison for another twelve hours. You can sleep in.”

“I do sleep in,” she argues.

“You’ve only slept three hours tonight. Try to get eight in. You’ll feel better.”

“Fine.” She gets up to dump the cooled remains of her tea down the sink, but Grant takes the pot out of her hands.

“I’ll take care of this. Just go to sleep.”

“Alright.” She leaves him to clean up. “And Grant?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“That’s all I’m asking.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Anonymous on tumblr, who requested the prompt "bad dreams, comfort." I think I almost executed that. Maybe?


End file.
